Tested the Apple Watch (new Series 5), and I really don’t like it. Some of my candid thoughts:

First of all, I think the Apple Watch ADDS more complexity and complication to your life.

Furthermore, there is something disorienting about focusing so closely on the tiny LCD screen on the Apple Watch UI. When I am really focused on changing something (inside the settings of the Apple Watch), I kind of get a small headache.

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Why are there two buttons?

When I first unpackaged the Apple Watch, I couldn’t figure how to turn it on. Intuitively I kept pressing on the crown. I couldn’t figure out how to initially turn it on until an Apple employee showed me the secondary button BELOW the crown. I believe that second button shouldn’t exist.

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Just use the iPhone

I don’t really see that much of a benefit of the Apple Watch vs just having an iPhone. iPhone still tracks your walking and such and daily activity.

The upside of Apple Watch

I think the cool thing about the Apple Watch is the health-related stuff. Perhaps for people with super bad insomnia, the sleep-tracking can help them. Also, it can monitor your heart rate, which is interesting.

Distraction

But this is the funny thing — even though the Apple Watch can track heart rate, it doesn’t tell me any information that I don’t already intuitively know.

For example, I did deadlifts at the gym today (420 pounds, one rep max attempt, sumo style):

Before attempting my one rep max, the watch was getting in my way, and was a distraction. Before lifting, I thought to myself:

I wonder how high my heart rate will be before and after my lift — if I had the Apple Watch on.

But this thought totally messed up my focus. And I need 110% focus before attempting a ‘one rep max’ in my deadlift. Therefore I took off the Apple Watch, and put it into my backpack before attempting my “one rep max”.

After I successfully lifted 420 on my deadlift, out of pure curiosity I put on the Apple Watch and checked my heart rate. It read 157 BPM.

Here is the information of my heart rate from today — from a range of 73 BPM to 159 BPM (after successfully completing my one-rep max in deadlift).

But this is the thing: OF COURSE I knew my BPM would go WAYYY higher after deadlifting my ‘one rep max’. How does this information actually practically help guide me in any useful way? It doesn’t.

Will having an Apple Watch encourage me to move and exercise more?

I don’t think so. For the most part, it will tell you information after the fact in terms of how much you moved today.

One useful thing: if you sit too long, or stand too long in one spot, it will notify you (of your sedentary behavior), and encourage you to move around. I think this is useful, but perhaps instead of telling people to stand up after sitting too long, a better thing is for us to simply embrace standing desks, and perhaps have a job which doesn’t allow us to sit too long.

Anti-notifications

I personally hate notifications and being disrupted or interrupted. The best way to NOT get distracted is to shut off ALL your notifications!

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With the Apple Watch, do you really want more distractions and notifications in your life?

Glancing at your watch isn’t much different than glancing at your phone

I have witnessed friends and other people “subtly” glance at their watch for emails or texts, and to be honest, it is just as “disrespect” or distracting as having someone check their phone.

The notion that:

Oh, I want to become more present with friends and family, by not always checking my phone (checking my Apple Watch instead).

I think this notion is misguided.

Apple Watch as a great fashion-equalizer

What I do think is very cool with the Apple Watch:

Anyone can afford it, and it looks “cool”. Much cheaper than buying a Rolex.

Therefore if you want it as a fashion accessory, go for it! I would actually argue that the Apple Watch is more pragmatic as a fashion accessory than a “useful digital device which will improve your quality of life”.

Suggestions for future iterations/design for Apple Watch

I would suggest the following ideas:

1. Get rid of the second button below the crown: Design a UI/UX which allows the user to do all the interactions with the crown of the watch, or just touching the Apple Watch screen.
2. Have fewer selections: There are WAYYYYY too many Apple Watch configurations. Too many finishes, too many bands, too many sizes, and too many options. Fewer options is aesthetically better (Steve Jobs would have wanted it this way).
3. Simplify the Activity Monitor UI/UX: This is confusing as hell, there is too much information. Perhaps best to simply tell people how much they walked today, how long they’ve walked today, and how little time they spent sitting today.
4. Make the default wallpaper the dynamic moving ones (Butterfly, Fire, Water): I find the ability to change the design of the Apple Watch very cool. I discovered the “Water Fire” animation, as well as the Jellyfish/Butterfly animations and found them ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL! This should be the default design, not all the numbers.

The Apple Watch as an art-object, not as a watch.

Let’s face it, nobody needs a ‘watch’ to tell time and the sort. I think the Apple Watch should be seen more as an art object– with beautiful backgrounds which elevate your mood! It needs to be made 1000x simpler, and you can offload a lot of the customization features to the iPhone (instead of trying to look at all those little dots for the icons, which I don’t think is a good UI). Probably a better UI/UX was the simple one from the iPod Nano touch-screen.

Hats off to the design/engineering team, but not for me.

I cannot dictate for you, but I would say I don’t like the Apple Watch (for myself, and my simple-minimal lifestyle). And to be frank, I think that Steve Jobs would have hated the Apple Watch in the current iteration (in terms of the complexity of the device).

The Apple Watch is still a beautifully engineered product. The heart rate monitor works very well, the EKG feature is cool, and there is certainly a lot of brainpower which went into it. And I am certain that the Apple Watch is a ‘net positive’, in terms of helping people track their movement and sleep.

But for us new ‘digital elite’, where we prize our focus (and we hate getting distracted), I say NO to the Apple Watch.

ERIC